(Washington Post) Aaron Blake - Israel shot to the head of the pack with an aggressive Covid-19 vaccination campaign, dropping from 10,000 new daily cases in January to an average as low as 10 last month. It began logging some days with zero deaths in April, and has recorded about 100 confirmed deaths in the last three months. But now the country is suddenly seeing an uptick in cases due to the delta variant, including among the 85% of Israeli adults who are vaccinated. Yet the number of serious cases remains extremely low. Israel is averaging about 120 weekly hospital admissions, which is down from a peak of nearly 2,000 in January. So while cases are less than 1/10 of what they were then, hospitalizations are about 1/16 and admissions to the intensive care unit are about 1/20, according to data collected by the University of Oxford. Israeli government data show the Pfizer vaccine is less effective at preventing coronavirus cases of the delta variant, but it is still 93% effective at preventing serious cases and hospitalization.
2021-07-22 00:00:00Full ArticleBACK Visit the Daily Alert Archive